Evaluating the usefulness/effectiveness of retrospectives

Proposer: Ralph

Participants: Kerstin, Cyril, Ervin, Sebastian L.

• Questionnaire for teams and managers to evaluate usefulness ⇒ “benefit” audit
• selling retrospectives, need Data
• external define goals for retrospectives might lead to in-effective retrospectives
• Don't need a happiness index

• A retrospective is useful/effektive when
  • learning occurs
  • change is initiated
  • a shared picture is established
• A retrospective has always an effect. Would there be another (cheaper) way to achieve this effect?

• Trust - missing when this question is asked
• Retro and success - what comes from what?

• Fluctuation is a measurable effect of employer satisfaction

• Ask the manager, how s/he would know that a retrospective was successful?
• Ask the other that would feel the impact, how they would know that a retrospective was successful?
• Ask the team, how they would know that a retrospective was successful?

from the questions, build a radar with different axis, e.g.:

• employer satisfaction
• recommendation of project/product/company to others (net promoter score)
• quality
• learning
• team collaboration
• customer satisfaction
• …

Note, naming the scales already influences answers and behavior.

See how measure are implemented, e.g.

^ Measure ^ Change performed ^ Scaling ^ Achievement ^

where

• x = start
• y = now
• z = want to be

Note, is seems not to be an effective measurement when we look at the transfer rate.

• Change could have happend without the retrospective,
• not changing a particular thing from the retrospective might be the right thing
• …

Measure time/money of particular improvements, calculate costs without change and with change

Story telling: capture success stories for future use/telling

• literature on the effectiveness of coaching could be helpful - research
• Give to research: How would a measure implementation metrics tell anything about the usefulness of retrospectives?